Among the various uses of water blasting systems is the one in the automotive industry, where the ultra high pressure guns can use water jetting for paint removal.
PTC, in fact, has created a particular system for FCA in the Cassino plant, where thousands of cars are produced.
Vehicle painting
All the plastic parts of the vehicles produced are painted by automated robots inside paint booths equipped with wheeled metal structures: however, when the robot paints the bumper, these supports are inevitably covered with paint in turn.
After a certain number of painting cycles, these structures accumulate a layer of paint which, for production needs, must be removed, to prevent the excess paint from polluting the pieces to be painted and causing them to be rejected.
The PTC waterblasting plant for FCA
In 2010, therefore, PTC created a waterblasting plant equipped with ultra-high pressure guns on this particular need of FCA, collaborating with the supplier who created a washing booth. An operator, using a manual lance, inside the plant cleans both the supports hooked to the support structure and the structure itself.
In addition to the ultra high pressure pumping unit (2500 bar) – with a water flow rate of about 20 liters per minute – PTC has supplied the electric control which gives consent to the activation of the pressure for the UHP gun, the necessary flexible pipes and safety clothing for working with high pressure jets.
Furthermore, an electric pump was created through which the machine, connected to the water mains and electricity supply, is managed remotely. Electric pump which has provided a high-pressure water distribution line for the subdivision of three washing stations: a main one and two other stations for occasional jobs in other points of the production line.
An electrical panel automatically manages both the distribution functions of the high pressure line and the control functions of the machine itself. The machine is equipped with an inverter to modulate the pressure according to the revolutions of the pump electric motor.
How the system works
Once the machine has started, the operator goes to the washing cabin and enables the workstation. A security system, through an interception box, gives consent to operate and blocks the workstation in the fortuitous case in which other workstations are started at the same time.
At that point, the operator holds the ultra-high pressure gun equipped with a rotary nozzle to start the operation of removing the paint from the panels and the support structure with the sole use of pressurized water.
The washing operations can last from a few minutes to a few hours: once the procedure is finished, the operator puts the ultra high pressure gun at rest, the support is moved forward, he leaves the washing cabin and the cabin is ready to receive another support to be cleaned, while the washed support is repositioned on the line to resume the production cycle of the plant.
The advantages of waterblasting for paint removal
Previously alternative process of washing was to send the components to be cleaned to an external company that uses a pyrolytic oven to burn the paint.
Many disadvantages of the previous procedure, starting from the logistics: times for disassembling the supports from the production line, handling and transport to and from the external company, with potential damage to the structures, without neglecting the risk of thermal deformation due to high temperatures of the oven.
The use of the waterblasting system and ultra-high pressure guns, on the other hand, completely eliminates the onerous logistics phase in terms of time and costs.
